A Message from the Kashrut Director, Rabbi J.D. Conway

Bruchim habayim ubeteavon!

Welcome to Kashrut 2009!

In this new guide we list over 7600 products including some 800 new products, a greatly expanded medicines section, and many new food categories, making the guide easier to use and more comprehensive than ever before. 

This is all thanks to the indefatigable and meticulous work of our senior Food Technologist Rosalind Coten and her team Elisheva Wieder, Sue Colman and Naomi Green together with the design and production team David Attiach, Myrna Elliot, Claire Peretz and Ilan Grossman.

During 2008 the Food Research Unit has enabled the free distribution of 80,000 Nosh Guides, a redesigned Kosher on Campus, answered thousands of product queries by phone and email, maintained our popular Facebook group, sent out regular bulletins by post, text alerts and via our 10,000 strong email list and above all researched and updated information on more than 7000 products!

Grateful  thanks are due to our advertisers and sponsors for helping support this project but above all to the United Synagogue who maintain this extensive and ambitious project for the benefit of the UK Jewish community.  I am delighted that the price of the guide has been held at £9.95 for the fifth year running and that we have been able to provide free access to the product list via the search engine on the US and KLBD websites which receives around 8000 hits per month.

Scrutinising ingredients, sub-ingredients and undeclared process aids as well as investigating manufacturing processes, shared use of equipment and cleaning procedures, and then reaching a halachic decision is a painstaking and exacting process.  Profound thanks are due to Dayan Menachem Gelley and his colleagues on the London Beth Din for their halachic guidance and ongoing support and encouragement at all times.

The exactitude and precision required in Kashrut investigation is alluded to in the biblical verses in Leviticus (Ch. 11 & 20) “… and I have distinguished you from the nations… and you shall therefore distinguish between the pure and the impure”.  The great commentator Rashi observes, the obligation “to distinguish” cannot refer to differentiating between the (kosher) cow and the (non-kosher) donkey where the difference is obvious but rather to “be knowledgeable and expert” in distinguishing between the more subtle aspects of food production and kashrut law which maybe as fine as “the breadth of a hair”.

The daily work of the Kashrut Division is the fulfilment of this mitzvah of lehavdil bein hatamei uvein hatahor and I thank my entire team for their dedication and devotion to this avodat hakodesh for the benefit of the Anglo Jewish community.

Rabbi Jeremy Conway
Director, LBD Kashrut Division

To purchase the guide please click here